Making grown-up decisions

Well, after some deliberating, we have decided to put wedding plans on hold. We recently got the car fixed, and it put a little damper on our wedding funds. So as of right now the wedding is off, but still in the future. It may still happen in 2012, we don't know yet. But as of right now, we are loving being married and living our lives. Hopefully I will be back soon though to start things back up again.

Update, take 2

So I'm back to finish my previous update. Whoo!

So since I last updated, I spoke with the photographer that we won a prize from at the show. They are RIDICULOUSLY expensive. I'm not sure if we are still "eligible" for the "prizes" since we are not booking them though because this was the list of options they sent me:

FREE $500 Gift of Choice

The Gifts of Choice are:

$500 FREE Engagement Session (Must be done 6-8 months prior to ceremony. Subject to availability.)

FREE $500 Medium Magazine Style Album

FREE $500 16x20 Print or Sofa/Mantel Print

FREE $500 2 Small Magazine Style Parent Albums

FREE $500 Shopping Spree of Reprints

FREE $500 towards our Digital Photo Booth *As seen in Platinum Weddings* (FREE with qualifying package.  Must be chosen prior to ceremony. Subject to availability)

These options, with the exception of perhaps the first one, all require us to buy something from them first. Crummy "prizes" if you ask me. But whatever. I've been to lazy to email them back to ask the details on whether or not the first one is still an option. I was just really disappointed with them when they said they were "affordable" and ended up being $3000+. Eh, whatever.

I did get a call from another photographer though which I spoke to on Wednesday. He is quite affordable when looking at his packages, but he has yet to get back to me with his estimates for travel fees to Key West. 

I still really, really like Clearly in Focus that I originally met at the first bridal show. They are so great. And they don't have travel fees. They are just barely above my budget, but it may come down to being them in the end.

In other news, I finally went out and bought the latest copy of "The Knot." It was another fashion edition. I'm not really into the fashion editions anymore. I know, I've only seen one before this one, but still. I think I already know what I'm going with as far as my dress, so that stuff no longer really interests me. Still there was a decent amount of useful information in this edition. 

I also finally got around to reading my latest Florida edition. They had these WONDERFUL ideas for personalization. One thing I loved were cookies in the form of their family crest. We have been wanting to make a family crest (and signet rings!) for me, the hubby, and the roommate ever since we deemed ourselves a "Clan." This would be an awesome plug for our unique family dynamic.

Oh! Speaking of unique and family... I almost forgot! At Christmas this year, a new member of the family was introduced at the in-laws'. Nilpferd, the hippopotamus. He is a traveling trophy. Each year at Christmas he will be passed on to a new family member. That family member (this year it's my youngest brother-in-law) will carry him along on trips and fill a photo album of Nilpferd at various locations of significance. Next year, that means he will be at the wedding of course. We have talked about him having a special spot in the ceremony and reception for prime photo ops. Steven, the officiant, is even cool with Nilpferd sitting on his shoulder during the ceremony. In any case, I am quite excited about this traveling trophy. I can't wait until it falls into our hands!

And, just because I find this hilarious, I will share a bit of news I uncovered in the last couple of days. Apparently, Andrew and I are related (other than by marriage). I have been working pretty diligently on his mother's side of his family tree taking a slight break on my own side. I have now found a common ancestor: Pocahontas. While she is my (insert several greats) grandmother, she is only a distant cousin to him. So we're inCREDibly distant cousins. I'm cool with this only because it's so far back AND because it's Pocahontas that joins us. :-P

As another update, I was perusing the DIY bride book at Barnes and Noble. (I'm sure I will probably buy it someday, but for the time being, I love opening it to random pages and seeing what I find.) They had instructions for a DIY canopy/huppah thing. It estimated the cost to be about $75 for DIYing it. This makes it seem incredibly do-able. Currently my budget for decorations is $200. I am not sure how much the few decorations I have in mind will actually cost, but I'm hoping this canopy fits in somehow.

Speaking of budget, I don't think I've officially shared my estimate breakdown of what I'm expecting to spend.

ESTIMATE COSTS
Food	1500
Beverage	250
Ceremony venue	1500
Stationery	400
Photographer	1000
DJ	300
Flowers	60
Cake	250
BM bags	500
Groomsmen+officiant	600
favors	400
flower girl buckets	10
dress	800
suit	300
decorations	200
reception venue	1000
HM	934

This makes the total $10,004 for a little less (probably a lot less depending on who can come) than 100 people now. Currently, unless I or Andrew are able to pick up more hours and/or get raises, I estimate we will only be able to save about $6,000-$7,000. This includes us completely paying off a couple of debts we've accrued and beginning paying back our ridiculous student loans. I am hoping, however, that we will get closer to my estimate, obviously. Certain numbers would definitely go down if people are unable to come, which I am anticipating though hoping against. It's a quite conflicting feeling I have about the guest list. In any case, I will keep updating on the budget, especially as things start to become more finalized.

Alright, I think that's about it for now. I'm sure I probably forgot a few things I wanted to mention, but I have time to come back and add them later. :-P Until next time!

Updates on all things wedding

Sorry for the posting delay. We moved and didn't have internet for a while. But I'm back, and I have a few updates.

We finally did the Sears photo shoot. We wore black tops and khaki pants. It was actually quite awkward. The girl asked us what color background we wanted. I said white since we were in black. We took a bunch of photos. They were so awkward though. And then she changed the background... to black. Unfortunately for us, since we only won one photo in the two sizes, we had a couple of nice shots, but we could only choose one. The best pose was the one on the black background. It was quite hard choosing between some "okay" photos on a nice background and a really nice photo on a crummy background. We chose the black background photo. We look like floating heads, but the shot is really sweet. And the large photo is HUGE! It shocked Andrew to see the size of the box it came in. Anyway, I will try to post the photo soon.

In other news, I went to another bridal show Sunday. It was run by the Perfect Wedding Guide, like the first show I attended in August. A girl from work went with me too, so it was so fun. It was slightly smaller than that first one. There were no photo booths or particularly interesting vendors. There were a lot of really good photographers though. I did not win any of the door prizes or the grand prize drawing, but I have already received a phone call from one of the photographers saying we won their secondary drawing. They drew six names and we won our choice of six prizes, each is valued at $500. I will go into detail about the choices later. I just realized the time, so I have to go to work. Until then!

And we're back to the photo shoot thing

So after canceling our photo session at Sears, I've been constantly asking Andrew when he wants to reschedule. The coupon we have for the free session expires December 4th, which is quickly approaching. Andrew decided he wanted to get a haircut before the shoot, which he has now done (and is actually quite funny because he parted his hair on the opposite side, and neither of us have gotten used to it yet.). Now that we all know our schedules for the week, we were able to decide a day and time to reschedule.

Our roommate starts teaching this week, so dropping us off for work will be quite a challenge from now on. This pretty much means, he will have to drop us off around 6-6:30am so he can be back to teach around 7am. Tomorrow, Andrew is off and I work at 4pm. Since I will still need to be dropped off around 6am to ensure I am there by 4, we decided that Andrew will tag along and we will walk up the street to the mall to take the photos. We decided on having our pictures done at 10am, then we'll have the rest of the day to chill and hang out at the mall until I have work.

As for what to wear... My work attire tomorrow (and pretty much from now on) is Starbucks attire-- black shirt and khaki pants. I told Andrew I didn't have to wear my work clothes for the pictures since I could easily throw my work shirt in my purse, but he actually kind of liked the idea of wearing black, so he wants to dress to match. I am so excited to have all of this planned, and I can't wait to do it tomorrow! I just don't know what to do with my hair. I can't really style it. It will be dry by the time we have our session. I hope it doesn't poof out. Oh well. I will try to post tomorrow or Tuesday about how everything went.

So quickly plans change

Andrew has decided he wants to get a haircut before we get the photo done. So I will have to call tomorrow to cancel the appointment we have and hope next week or the week after we have the time to get it done despite it being a holiday and that I will start working.  I appreciate that he wants the picture to look good, but at the same time, I worry the expiration date will come and pass if we wait. In any case, I will keep you informed on when we reschedule.

Update on the engagement shoot

So, I still haven't started work. At this point, it seems like Wednesday would be the soonest I can start. We have decided to seize this guarantee in my schedule to go ahead with the engagement shoot. We have it scheduled for Sunday at 2:30pm. Our roommate works at 11am, so he will just drop us off at the mall and we'll hang out until our appointment. Then we'll hang out some more until our roommate gets off work to pick us up or walk up the street to where he works and wait for him there. In any case, it's set.

I'm kind of excited about it. I'm still not quite sure what we're going to wear, but we have tonight and tomorrow to figure it out. Hopefully, after the shoot, I will figure out a way to post the photo on here. Until then!

Trimming the fat

So, after a talk with Andrew last night, I started thinking seriously about our guest list. We talked about even just cutting it down to family and 20 or fewer friends. But, while that hasn't been completely decided, I did find several people who didn't really belong on a wedding guest list.

At least on my end, I had a lot of people on there that I realized I was only inviting so other guests would have someone they knew there or so fraternity pictures looked more full. I realized, that's not really necessary. If they want to attend my wedding, they will find other people, new people, to talk to and meet at the wedding. And I don't need the entire fraternity there to have my fraternity photos. Plus, some of the extra people I had on the list are the very people that would have made a nice party turn quite ugly very quickly. So now the guest list sits at around 100 instead of around 150. (I know, quite a cut!)

As for an update on previous posts, Andrew is working very hard trying to come up with a photobooth program like the one I found online. He's making progress, it's just going rather slow. We have time though, so I'm not too worried. And we still haven't scheduled a day to get our engagement shot done. I was supposed to maybe start work today, but the drug testing company is still being lazy when it comes to processing my results. Maybe I'll be able to start by the end of the week though. Then we can look at my schedule and figure something out. I'll keep you posted!